Judging by the opinion polls this week, the Alaskan Governor,
Sarah Palin, probably will not get to be the US vice-president. But
in her brief starring role on the global stage she has been a
powerful psychic enema, flushing out the poison at the heart of
establishment feminism for all to see.

No more sheathed claws or pretence about "tolerance" and
"diversity". From Madonna to Sandra Bernhard, Pamela Anderson,
Naomi Wolf, Lindsay Lohan and Kathy Lette, a certain type of
influential progressive woman has been driven to insane rage by
Palin's very existence.

Bernhard, a comedian in America, reportedly said Palin would be
"gang-raped by my big black brothers" if she entered Manhattan, a
comment she later denied making. In a deranged concert performance
posted on YouTube, Bernhard calls Palin a "turncoat bitch [and]
Uncle Woman who jumps out of the shed and points her fingers
at other women You whore in your cheap f--king
cheap-ass plastic glasses and your hair all up. [You'll get] a
bikini-waxed fresh Jewish t--t in your face".

Lette, the Australian expatriate author, described her as "very,
very dangerous. There's something wrong with her She's a
post-feminist - she's kept her Wonderbra and burnt her brain."

The violent sexual language used against Palin would be
intolerable, possibly criminal, from a man. Yet these women think
nothing of describing the 44-year-old mother of five as a MILP: "A
Mother I'd Like To Punch".

From the moment Palin emerged, the effect on some women has been
like this, from an editor of online feminist magazine
Jezebel: "My head almost exploded from the incandescent
anger boiling in my skull. Many friends said things like
'This feminist wants to murk that idiotic c--t.' "

Not that Palin is a favourite of males of the left-leaning
entertainment establishment, with Matt Damon last week damning her
as a "scary thing".

But the intemperate reaction by women to Palin flags something
beside ideological differences - a weird, visceral rage, with its
roots in some entrenched psychic pain. There is an echo of bitchy
high-school jealousy of the popular queen bee from the snarling,
self-mutilating nerd and goths who vainly lusted after the cute
boys she snared.

The consolation for the losers is that homecoming queens are
meant to get married, get pregnant, get fat and lose their looks so
the self-made strugglers such as Bernhard and Madonna can patronise
them at school reunions. Palin, by having it all, has cheated. Not
only was she Miss Wasilla 1984, but she married her childhood
sweetheart, Todd Palin, kept her figure, had five attractive,
seemingly well-adjusted children and was successful in her
career.

If she made any sacrifices or compromises they were not
apparent. And she had won the marriage jackpot: a hunky
house-husband who is able to take a back seat without losing his
cojones. She juggled home and family, even breast-feeding in the
office, without any angst, middle-class welfare, or even bags under
her eyes. How did that work?

Instead of lauding the aspirational quality of Palin's
achievements, establishment feminists despised her for showing up
their inadequacies.

There is much more than high school angst to Palin hatred. Her
ideology is 180 degrees wrong - evangelical Christian, hunting,
oil-drilling and, most important of all, anti-abortion.

There is even a bumper sticker, "Abort Sarah Palin", and no
diatribe against her fails to mention abortion.

Abortion is the emotional peg on which Palin-haters hang their
hatreds and justify their intemperance. The touchstone issue which
makes both sides hyperventilate has become such a bedrock article
of faith for establishment feminists that they question it as
little as their born-again Christian nemeses question the existence
of God.

Even in light of medical advances in foetal surgery, premature
baby medical care and prenatal imaging, it is unthinkable that
progressive women would rethink abortion, even late-term
abortion.

For them "choice" is not about choice at all, which is why Palin
is such a threat.

In Australia, Emily's List is the Labor Party organisation aimed
at stacking Parliament with progressive women who are the
antithesis of Palin. They scored a victory last week when the
Victorian Parliament passed the nation's most liberal abortion
laws, sanctioning abortion on demand up to 24 weeks of
pregnancy.

Of 153 Labor women in Australian parliaments, about 75 per cent
or 113 are members of Emily's List. They successfully agitated six
years ago for the ALP to adopt an affirmative action target of 40
per cent for female MPs by 2012. But they have to be the right kind
of women, who have signed up to the group's No. 1 requirement, to
be "pro-choice".

For a group purporting to promote "diversity", its ideology is
remarkably homogeneous. One retired MP but still influential member
of the ALP NSW right describes them as a "barnacle that has
attached itself to the Labor Party". He does not want to be named
because he says, "I don't want to cop their wrath They can
be vicious." Which, for the NSW Right, is saying something.

The Victorian MP Christine Campbell, one of the few Labor women
who voted against the abortion bill, identified hostility at the
time from "a lot of women in the Labor Party who have personally
had abortions and don't want to feel they are criminals".

She said yesterday: "Feminists like myself are just saying [this
issue] is not about criminality, but what abortion does to the
woman It injures her deeply. [But] we continue to feed the
denial."

Her Emily's List colleagues refused even to consider her
amendments, for counselling services and to change the abortion
cut-off date to 20 weeks from 24 weeks, when a foetus is viable
outside the womb. Emily's List had the numbers so compromise was
unnecessary. That a virtually single-issue lobby group could have
seized power in one of Australia's two main parties is what's
really scary, not Sarah Palin.

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